This blog post first appeared on PRSA’s ComPRehension. Although most marketers accept that integrating marketing communications is a powerful approach, campaigns today seldom realize the full power of the methodology commonly known as IMC. Most of us synchronize our earned and owned media in some way. Many of us have learned empirically the right combinations of tactics that lead to the most engagement, or the highest landing page traffic. What’s often missing in campaigns is the ability to plan, manage and measure the synergy that occurs as a result of powerful IMC strategies and strong linked tactics. It’s the acceleration caused by this synergy – the combination of marketing efforts that add up to more than the sum of their parts – that provides the best results. Synergy looks and feels different in every IMC campaign. The good news is there are common elements to successful IMC campaigns that result in increased synergy. The first is message alignment. IMC requires a persistent, consistent messaging strategy across channels. A core, or integrated, strategy statement should drive every campaign message. This statement is rarely shared with an audience. It is simple, to the point, and states what we’re doing and why we’re doing […]

Strategies are hard. Don’t worry if you feel like you really didn’t “get” yesterday’s task. Or maybe you came up with too many ideas. Either way it’s okay. Strategies are supposed to be the “thinking” part of marketing. So it’s important to chew them over. Just like cud. Some you spit out. Some you digest. I promise not to take the analogy any farther. Today I want you to think about strategies that you use currently and rate them from 1-5. 1 means they’re terrible and you will never do them again. (Like the time I paid to be on a panel where a woman actually sang our bios.) 5 means they bring in amazing results. Remember, strategies are not actionable. Yours might be like these: – print advertising – direct sales – networking events – social media – content marketing – local public relations Consultants tend to write beautiful marketing strategies like this : Attract moms age 30-35 via online public relations campaign featuring pitches and alerts pegged to celebrity news. You don’t need to get that fancy. Make your list and keep chewing.

But in my experience I've seen many, many instances where excellent marketing agencies get concepts shot down because the client could not get their own personal bias out of the way. You are not your best customer.

Molly Borchers, Senior Communications Strategist at (W)right On Communications, recently published a pull-no-punches post on The HuffPo Blog about the love/hate relationship between journalists and public relations professionals, and why the hate part of the equation is pretty darn unfair. We’ve all seen the disparaging tweets and snide blogs that journalists casually let fly about PR pros, and sometimes that scorn is earned. There are definitely people in public relations who are clumsy, clueless and waste the media’s time. But that’s not the majority of us, so we shouldn’t all be painted with the same brush. All you have to do is search Google for “bad press release” and you’ll find plentiful examples of PR gone wrong. What journalists need to remember is for every irrelevant or poorly-written pitch they receive, there are many others that are on-target (even if the timing doesn’t always fit into their editorial schedule) and handled professionally. PR continues to exist because it works, and journalists would have to do a lot more work themselves to find sources and stories without the help of public relations.

As someone who has become adjusted to digital marketing, having grown up with the web, it feels out of place when I begin to look around my physical settings and engage with marketing efforts since so few of them seem to reach me on the same level as I’d expect online. As someone who has applied digital marketing strategies for various projects, it was easy to become wrapped up in the methods frequently used by others. It was equally easy to dismiss traditional marketing methods (namely… print) compared to what was possible online (thanks to flexibility, features, and tracking) until I began to realize that much of what is done in the physical space actually applies to much of what happens online (in a complimentary way). I think of it similar to how we say “don’t judge a book by its cover.” We are quick to dismiss traditional marketing methods if we have been conditioned to the online method because of cost and efficiency. What can traditional advertising teach us about online advertising?

A good publicist these days knows that building and maintaining relationships should be part of their daily job. They also know that every day there are hundreds of new media personnel to not only meet, but pitch.

I wonder when businesses will finally get it that there isn't a silver bullet, single item that will market them to success. What works is the mix...and although it's frustrating to realize that you have to juggle several balls at once these days for marketing to stick, it's what you have to do.